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My mother was staunchly anti-cooking, and she loved to clean, but did not like to cook.

And, yes, well, when you're a little neurotic, cleaning definitely scratches the itch that cooking does not.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to your mama's kitchen.

This is the place where we explore how we are shaped as adults by the kitchens that we grow up in as kids. Of course the food, but all the other stuff that happens there too. The way we eavesdropped on our parents, the songs on the radio, what you saw through the kitchen window during the homework at the kitchen

table, all of that lives inside us. I'm Michelle Norris. And our guest today is someone who has

thoughts and opinions that people love to hear. I'm talking about Molly Jong Fast. She works with me

at my other job at NMSNBC as a political analyst where people learn all kinds of smart things from her.

She is also a correspondent for Vanity Fair and her latest book, How to Lose Your Mother, a daughter's memoir came out this year and it details her relationship with her own mama, who happens to be the legendary Erica Jong.

Now, to say that Erica Zhang was an icon of the 1970s is not at all an overstatement.

Fear of Flying sold millions of copies.

It was a staple on bookshelves of feminists and really woman of all kinds all around the world.

And while Erica Jong was flying around the globe, her daughter Molly, was back at home

trying to figure out her own life. And Molly joins me today to talk about that life,

to talk about that book and to talk about the way the kitchen of her youth maybe lives inside her in

some way today. Hey, Molly, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks. I'm glad to be here. First of all,

can I just begin by saying that I so enjoyed this book? And for those of you who are reading it,

if you have not dipped into the audio version, just a pro tip. It's really worth listening to. Molly reads

it herself. It doesn't even feel like you're reading a script. It feels like you're telling me a

story. There are several asides that were written in a certain way, but when I hear you,

you sound like someone who writes out loud,

like you're almost speaking into the computer. I don't know if that's actually how you're

...